


Out Tonight

by aura218



Category: Thick of It (UK)
Genre: Chaptered, Christmas, Clubbing, Coming of Age, Drinking & Talking, F/M, Friendship, Girl Power, Holidays, Late Night Conversations, Light-Hearted, One Shot, Post Series, RP, Short, Tumblr, chic lit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-03
Updated: 2012-12-03
Packaged: 2017-11-20 04:42:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/581414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aura218/pseuds/aura218
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the eve of Malcolm's trial, Sam's best girl friends drag her out for a night of fun. But she can't get her boss-come-roommate out of her head, and the club scene isn't what she remembered it to be. A fic about the fork in the road.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. All I Want for Christmas...

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the shenanigans going on in the TTOI Tumblr RP blogs. Thanks to [RP Sam](http://asksamcassidy.tumblr.com/) and [RP Malcolm](http://askmalcolmtucker.tumblr.com/).

Malcolm was highlighting depositions at the dining room table, dressed down in track bottoms and fluffy pullover, when Sam appeared in half the standard prescribed clothes for the average former PA. Even when she padded from guest bath to room she'd claimed as hers, the towel she favored covered more of her arse and general breastal area than the wee skirt and strappy top that dangled ambitiously from her body.

"Is it Fleet Week?" He looked at her over the rims of his glasses. He'd grown accustomed to a certain one-of-the-guys banter with her over the years, but she was still a young and beautiful woman.

Sam took the chair beside him and crossed one bare, fishnetted leg over the other, wiggling her feet into a buttery-smooth boots she must have saved up for. She was dolled up like a uni student out to score free drinks, but the feet going into her boots were decked in her blue monkey socks. Absurd child. He wondered if that meant she wasn't expecting any damn fool to take them off her, of if she was playing the virginal co-ed. He couldn't imagine her ever being unaware.

"Push?" She waggled her slim foot at him. "How are the depos?"

He gripped her small shoe by the arch and pushed, as she kicked back. Her heel slid home.

"Obvious as Ollie in a skin joint," he said. He couldn't see much, despite her thigh dangling in the air like that, but he looked long enough for her to know he was looking, then returned to his papers. She zipped her boot and proffered the other one.

"You really can come out with us," she said.

Malcolm snorted. "Nothin' more pathetic than an auld bastard drinkin' with the bairns, complainin' about the shit music and dancin' like an alkie comin' down off the DT's."

She looked him over while she put in her earrings, little silver hoops she sometimes wore to work; they had been a gift from that courier boyfriend, long gone. The one who wore tighty little shorts to show off his biker thighs and tiny cock, because he'd been using on breaks, not that Sam believed Malcolm until she saw it herself.

Her phone had started ringing days ago, and he'd pestered her to admit that her girl friends were angling to drag her out. Malcolm had pushed her to say yes, pestered her that he'd be fine alone for a goddamn night, trial be damned. He wasn't on fuckin' suicide watch, and he was starting to feel like this house was a tomb and someone had condemned her to take his messages in the next life. Was she looking for another job? Was she following up every day? 

It was Christmas and the trial started in two days and the damn girl deserved a night out. She deserved more. So he snuck three £20s into her purse -- for her safety and so she wouldn't feel guilty over having a good time.

"I won't be late," Sam said as she wrapped his too-big, borrowed winter coat around her stupidly half-dressed body.

"Be late." He ducked her kiss. "You're only young once."

Her lips were strawberry-sticky on his cheek and she left behind a cloud of the sweet, floral stuff she put in her hair.

"Please don't spend all night reading those, all right?" she said as she fiddled in her purse, lingering at his side. "Watch a film or something -- call your sister back."

He sighed. Women. He frog-marched her to the door, tottering on those skinny heeled boots, as she nagged him about the supper she'd left in the fridge and that he wasn't permitted to worry, perjury was very difficult to prove. He opened the door and had almost succeeded in ushering her into the snow when she grabbed on to his arms.

"Malcolm." She looked up at him, oval, brown eyes lined in liquid blue, too much blusher, and the wet look on her lips. In her fuck-me boots, she was only a hair's breadth smaller than he was. She was and wasn't his Sam.

"You're going to be late," he said.

Sam seemed to forget what she was going to say. She opened the coat. "How do I look?"

He took her in, from her bosom-flaunting top thing to the tiny skirt, legs for days, and the boots like a condemned man's last wet dream. All for someone else.

"Beautiful," he said. "Fuckin' lass of my dreams -- any man's dreams."

Her smile was worth anything she could wear to impress whatever wet tossers who'd be lookin' to hump her up in their cum-damp school pants in this club she was doing to.

"Thanks."

And she clacked away for the tube.

*-*-*

Nine p.m. on a Friday night.

He and solicitor had a game plan to hammer out; this was almost _fun_.

Malcolm finished lining up the evidence summaries and moved on to a stack of the prosecution's subpoenas, chuckling as he went. Fuckin' lost sods were sunk deeper than a gerbil in Ricky Gervais's colon.

*-*-*

The club was hot, loud, and packed with uni boys. Very handsy. The girls were still in the queue forty minutes after they arrived when it started to sleet, and Gemma started shrieking about her fucking shoes.

"Why does she always wear 'satin shoes from Milan' in fucking December?" Alicia said close to Sam's ear. She pointed to her head. "Do you see this hair? Do you think I'm happy?"

Sam sighed. "Wait here. Hold my coat."

"It's freezing!" Alicia called, but Sam ignored her, the cold, and her hardening nipples. Alicia draped Malcolm's jacket over her hair.

Later, after they jumped the line, she didn't explain her full tactic. Only that that 'please' and breasts and a confident tone went a long way in government, and in life.

"I can't believe you did that!" Alicia said as they strode past the queue of pissed-off, cold, waiting girls in tiny outfits.

"That was nothing, Malcolm expects miracles all the time."

"Six," Alicia said.

Sam frowned, proffering her hand to be stamped. "It's eleven pounds."

"Six times you've said your boyfriend's name since we left the tube station," Alicia said as she paid.

Sam watched her friends -- these women she'd known for nearly ten years -- sashay into the club, curious and irritated. It was not. She wasn't that girl, the talk about her boyfriend on girls' night girl.

"He's not my boyfriend!" she called into the club, to an audience of three dozen drunk people who didn't care.

*-*-*

A call to solicitor confirmed what the subpoena suggested: the prosecution's evidence was utter shite -- Chinese whispers from spotty kids in the locker room. They had nothing, and only one more working day to come up with something better. Solicitor told him not to get cocky -- his favorite phrase -- but Malcolm called Jamie to tell him to back off from Phase Two. The one involving a strategically placed biro filled with chemicals legally obtained separately, but not combined.

He turned on telly and found the tupper of Sam's noodle thing to eat cold, the way he liked it.

"Cold like my soul," he muttered, reveling in the sour tomato.

Needing some light stress relief, Malcolm asked his Twitter machine what the Occupy hippies were finding offensive today.

*-*-*

Sweat curled down Sam's spine and her hair stuck to her face. She felt the opposite of sexy. The music was some ambient, melody-less throb; her friends who hadn't disappeared were grinding drunkenly in the congregation of people so far away from dancing, but having collective simulated sex to the suggestion of a beat. The bar was crowded three-man deep, and the same asshole had 'accidentally' brushed her arse twice now. She was ready for him this time.

She grabbed his hand, twisted the thumb back, and sank her heel into the top of his shoe.

"Back. the fuck. off." She looked into his eyes. Held the glare.

He had a narrow, pocked face, and unfortunate hair. He made the mistake of flapping his mouth, but his eyes were scared. She twisted his thumb and he shouted and lifted his free hand, but she knew to watch men's hands when their pride was at stake.

Her knee angled into the pit of his crotch moved faster than he could block, just like Malcolm taught her. _If any one of these power-mad auld fucks gets too close, love, and I'm not here, you have my permission to_ remind _them to respect your personal space._

The bouncers were by her side in an instant. The fucking pervert tried to spin a story that she was the crazy bitch instigator, but Sam said, simply and loudly, "he groped me." The big men in dark shirts hoisted him off his fluttering feet and hauled him out.

Sam got back in line, and was unsurprised to find herself directly in front of the bartender. She wasn't charged for her drink.

The crowd parted like the Dead Sea as she left the bar, sipping her gin and tonic. Alicia was waiting for her at the edge of the dance floor. She was hard to miss, a wide-eyed, tall, black woman with natural hair, wearing a gleaming white dress; also, she was visibly disturbed.

"Are you okay?" Sam said.

Alicia went from scared to _angry_ in an instant. "Are _you_? What the fuck just happened?"

Sam shrugged. "Guys kept grabbing my ass. I got sick of it. Do you want some of my drink? You look upset."

Alicia led her to the marginally quieter, cool alcove under the stairs where they could delicately hoist themselves onto an equipment crate. "Sam -- they had to carry him out. Where did you learn to take a guy down like that?"

She rolled her eyes. "They carried him because he was drunk and about to fight them. It's fine, he was inappropriate, the bouncers took care of him."

Alicia looked her over. Sam wondered if she had done something wrong, but what was she supposed to do? The guy wasn't going to stop, he'd thought it was a 'see what I can get away with' game, he deserved what he got. And . . . ok, she didn't actually _know_ if he was going to hit her, but he really looked like he was going to.

Alicia took her drink and knocked back a quarter of it. Sam didn't mind, her head was feeling funny.

"What's been going on with you since you moved in with your boss?" Alicia said. "I've hardly heard from you. I mean, are you two --"

"No," Sam said. "We're friends. We're just working together and he needs some support. I mean, we worked together, like, really intensely for a long time. I feel like I grew up with him, you know? I mean, think about ages twenty-three to thirty, that's a long time to be with someone. Professionally."

"Right after uni 'til now." Alicia nodded, thinking. "We were so different then."

"Am I different?" Sam pressed.

Alicia cocked her head. "I don't know. I guess we all are. Except fucking _Gemma_ , whom I'm actually hiding from right now. Let someone else babysit, I do enough of that at home these days."

Sam leaned around the stairs, as if the siren call of permanent adolescence could resound through the revelry. "What's she doing now?"

"Lost her boyfriend, lost her phone. Lost her mind."

They giggled, and for an instant, it was 2000 and they had fake IDs in their bras next to student union-provided condoms "just in case", and would go back to their dormitory to eat popcorn and watch a film in their pyjamas and rainbow socks and profess greater enjoyment had together than chasing boys in clubs.

Sam crossed her legs and leaned shoulder-to-shoulder against her friend, not caring that they were sticky in the heat. There was a cool breeze from an open door, and she felt comfortable for the first time since she left the house.

"How's the baby?"

Alicia fished her phone from her boot. "Huge. Hungry. Smart as anything."

We're the only two people here, Sam thought, looking at baby pictures instead of getting debauched without making one.

*-*-*

Occupiers were boringly unlikely to arouse. Ryan Murphy provided much easier entertainment.

*-*-*

"Are you going back to his?" Alicia said as they waited arm-in-arm on the kerb, shivering, for fucking drunk Gemma to hail them a cab. She was a controlling and energetic drunk.

"It's where all my stuff lives for now." Sam stared down at the wet toes of her shoes on the slushy street. The air was needle-sharp in her lungs, the sky clear as a sapphire as the slivered moon hung high between the tall buildings.

Her feet were icy blocks of pain and she wished she had those compact ballet slippers that could be shoved in a tiny, going-out purse. She wished she was a fucking _man_ and could wear the same pair of rubber-soled, sneaker-interiored shoes for all occasions save getting married and meeting the queen.

Some fucker whistled at them and asked for a threesome. She ignored him, and he asked again, with clearer, rapey intentions. Gemma screamed at him to fuck off and he drove away, but only because the light changed.

"We need to fucking go," Alicia said. "If I get killed by football hooligans, my husband is never gonna babysit again."

Sam grinned. "We could walk to Malcolm's, really, and he'd probably drive you --"

"I'm not waking up your four-hundred year old boyfriend to drive my arse back to Clapham," Alicia said. "Gemma! That's a taxi over there, go get it!"

Doggedly, Gemma leapt over the median and stopped a taxi just as it was about to pull away from a stop sign. Gods looked over children, idiots, and drunk girls who were savants at getting cabs at one a.m. She always did this, always threw a fit if they tried to stop her, never got hit, always got a cab. Of course they worried about her, had tried to talk her into seeing someone about her drinking and adolescent borderline diagnosis, but the power of friendship in adulthood was limited.

"She got it!" Sam cried.

Alicia, in wedge sling-backs, hauled Sam across the street in a jog and hoisted her over the median like they were at wilderness camp. Anything to keep the cab from escaping the babbling, drunk girl.

*-*-*

Malcolm had the sort of insomniac's tiredness that was distinct from sleepy, when the world went grey and unimportant, and details shrunk pleasantly far away. He slouched on the sofa, feet on the low coffee table, staring through a film he'd seen at the cinema in the Seventies.

Christ, it was past one; how late were the clubs staying open these days? Sam was never very good at hailing a taxi. How late did the tube run? Was it late on weekends? Malcolm didn't take the tube, but he was aware that it caused other people to take much more time to get places than he considered reasonable or convenient.

He looked at the phone in his hand, flipping between her name in his contacts and the main screen.

"Idiot auld cock." He flipped the phone onto the table. "She can bloody well take care of her own self."

*-*-*

They dropped off Gemma first, by girl friends' tradition.

"Thanks, you guys," she always said. "You're my best friends."

"Drink lots of water," they reminded her. Sam hadn't seen the inside of her apartment in years.

Alicia's was absurdly far away, but in the opposite direction from Malcolm's, so she volunteered to ride along, despite Alicia's protests. Looping her arm through her friend's, and snuggling into her warm side, Sam didn't mind. She had a mysterious benefactor tonight.

"What're we gonna do about her?" Alicia said.

"Slowly disassociate?"

Alicia was quiet. Sam wondered if her newly bitchy side had come out.

"You know?" Alicia said. "It's not -- I mean, she's gotten worse, with the clubbing? When I see her for lunch or movies, it's old times. But that's sort of it, isn't it? She's _just like_ she was in uni. Ten years ago."

"And you've moved on. You're married and just had a baby --"

"And you have done too," Alicia said. "Honey, the things you tell me about your work? Uni-Sam would have curled up and cried if some guy had laid hands on her like that."

Sam pulled away. "Good to know I'm a complete aggressive monster now."

She wouldn't have _cried_ , for Chrissake . . . maybe stood still and silent and let him do whatever he wanted. God, what would Malcolm think of a girl like that? In some princessy part of her mind, a fleeting image appeared: Malcolm rushing in, pulling the guy's hand off of her, shouting him down. Turning to her, his face animated and concerned, demanding if she was okay.

Thank god telepathy was mere fiction.

"No," Alicia said. "You're capable. Things don't shock you anymore. I bet you don't get anxious like you used to."

Sam twisted a button on Malcolm's sleeve. She hadn't told anyone she was wearing his coat; she could smell his cologne and the way his cloths smelled when they were fresh from the dryer.

"I do," Sam said. "I just hide it better. But -- I think I get that way over more sensible things. I think . . ." she thought about course of her life, and the nervous girl who had gone to uni twelve years ago. "I've seen so many blow ups and scandals and really ridiculous humans that I just don't care about people getting upset with me. I think I've put a lot of my past -- like, with my dad -- in perspective. I see people as human now, instead of big scary monsters that can crush me."

"Is that because of Malcolm?"

Sam looked at her. In the criss-cross of streetlamp light, Alicia tilted her head in concern. The cab was warm, and the cabbie had the radio tuned to a soft French station. From beneath the floorboards came the rush of the tires cutting through the wet streets; it sounded exactly like Malcolm frying a steak on the hob while she worked or read upstairs.

"A little," Sam said. "He's not afraid of anyone. He's confident that his intellect will get him out of anything. I've learned so much from him."

As they pulled up to Alicia's house, she squeezed their hands together on Sam's knee. "It's okay if you're attracted to him." Over Sam's protests, she insisted, "It doesn't mean you have to do anything about it. But you wouldn't be the first woman to fall for her mentor."

Sam didn't know what to think of that. She accepted the hug and kiss and promised to see each other soon.

In the silence as the cab sped back to Malcolm's, her thoughts buzzed.


	2. It's Beginning to Look a Lot like Stalking

It was half two when he heard the door open. Malcolm lowered the TV volume and listened to her unzip those architectural boots and hang his coat in the hall cupboard. She walked barefoot past the den, upstairs to her room. The shower ran in her bath. Disappointed, knowing this was no hour to be discussing any sort of legal anything anyway, he collected his dishes.

As he crossed the hall, she appeared at the foot of the stairs. The makeup had been washed off, her hair was knotted in a clip, she was wearing a holey t-shirt and no bra, and her track bottoms were slipping down one hip.

"Did I wake you up?" Sam said.

He gestured with his elbow at the near-silent television. "No, I was noddin' in front of the telly."

She waved in the general area where he kept his kitchen. "Oh. Sorry, I was just hungry."

"I was just -- cleaning up," he said.

The moment held.

He didn't know why she wasn't moving, or why he felt it inappropriate to simply step around her, other than that he'd clearly startled her in her jams. Aside from walking down the hall in towels, they'd managed to orbit one another as completely clothed as they'd been in the office, save a lascivious bare foot or suggestively nude ankle. He knew she wasn't the same kid he'd hired years ago, and no woman would put her life on hold to play nursemaid to a man for no ulterior reason. But he sure as hell wasn't going to take advantage of her inexperience before she'd sorted out her motives.

She crossed her arms over her chest, effectively emphasizing her braless state. He fixed his eyes on a spot over her left ear. She turned and he necessarily followed her into the kitchen.

She looked adorable.

As he washed his dishes and set them in the strainer, she scooped her frozen soy Dream-guhrt ("That's no' ice cream, Sam.") into a dish and drizzled caramel from the bottle she kept in stock on the door. She tsked his shopping suggestions when he tried to tell her that her calorie bargaining was illogical: fake ice cream, suggary toppings. As he dried, she idled over to him at the sink, leaned against the worktop, and fellated the hell out of her first scoop.

They flirted. In text, emails, grocery lists stuck to the fridge door. She was a hell of a flirt and he used words the way decorators flung roses at a mobster's wedding. At first, he took it as a little girl playing with the big kids. But as he spent more time in her personal life, saw Real Sam, not PA Sam, he grasped that she knew exactly what she was doing.

"How was your night?" was Malcolm's faux innocent, opening volley.

She wrinkled her nose. "All right. Caught up with an old friend. Club was pointless -- all the guys were drunk and grabby. And one of my oldest friends is apparently focused on becoming a full time alcoholic omnishambles."

He set the dish down. "Grabby how?"

She related an _infuriating_ story.

"I taught you to do that, eh?" he said. By then, the dishes were returned to the cabinet, and he was twining the folded tea towel around his hands.

She set her bowl down. "Mm hm. Like, you said I should go like this?" She held her hands out and conducted him by the shoulders into the center of the room. She took his shoulders, and pantomimed a kick aimed for his groin.

"Ah, but I can block that, if you telegraph by grabbing my shoulders first," Malcolm said.

"But that's what you told me," she said.

"Go again, I'll show you."

She took him by the shoulders, and when her knee started for his thighs, he grabbed it. She yelped, balance lost, and he caught her around the waist. She giggled and held on to him, their bodies crashing together. He held her thigh against his hip and she hopped on one leg until she found her balance.

"Put me down!" she said.

"Oh, no, love, I don't think a proper attacker would heed any requests."

She gave him a shove and he set her to rights.

"Why did you tell me that, then?" she said, fixing her hair bobby.

"Because, if the tosser's pished, he won't expect a lit'ral bollocking even if you first _narrated_ the many ways you're going to knock his fucking grapes up the crack of his arse. In fact, that's an effective way to avoid getting into a fight --"

"Which is the best way to win any fight, you told me," she recited.

"And it's true." He tapped her nose, and she smiled. "But if you have to fight a sober man, do this."

He showed her Jamie's prized move for maximum pain when taking down a big bruiser, seeing as Sam was so wee.

"Women are pointy," he reminded her as he showed her how to make a duck-bill-shaped eye gouger with her nails. "If someone comes up behind you, kick at the knees like I showed you."

He circled behind and lightly cupped her shoulder, to show he was ready. Her leg flailed, all energy and no aim. She whirled on the tile floor and collapsed into the worktop, wincing and holding her hip. He bit back his laughter.

"Oh, shut up," she said.

"And yet you really took a man down tonight." He beckoned her. "Try again, darling."

Sam insisted they move 'somewhere I won't crack your Scottish head open when I floorplant you.'

"Big words," Malcolm said as they moved into the den, hand in hand.

He could feel her eyes and her silence as he moved his laptop and tidied his papers. He didn't want to talk about the trial, but she asked anyway. Of course she did. It was what she was here for.

He told her about the prosecution's joke of a body of evidence, how they had plenty to show that he hadn't done anything wrong, and there was no way they could prove he'd done it.

"But you did," she whispered.

"What?" he said.

"Nothing." She stood in the center of the room, arms around her stomach.

He took two long strides across the room. "What was that?"

"Malcolm, I'm tired --"

"Sam --"

"You did it." She met his eyes.

It was two twenty-five in the morning on a frozen December first, and for the first time, Sam said the thing they'd ignored in order to pretend their little shack up was -- what? A Platonic tryst? Kid's clubhouse? Limbo? He could feel his heartbeat in his ears and his throat and he didn't know _why_ he wanted to howl. What did she matter? This little girl, this untrained secretary? She had no power over him. She couldn't _do_ anything with this information. But she was looking at him like -- like she _knew_ him.

"If you -- you have no proof," he started, waving his finger at her. The air in the dark room was utterly still.

"Malcolm," she said quietly, backlit by the moon or maybe a streetlamp.

He dropped his shaking hand to his side. Christ. He stalked from one end of the carpet to the other, rubbing his face. He needed her to _get the fuck away from him._ He was not a nice man, and she was a very nice girl.

"What're you going to do, Sam? Eh?" He glanced at her in passing. She stood still, watching him. He couldn't meet her eyes. "If you think you can sell this, or, or -- I was your _employer._ You were nothing before me."

"Malcolm," she said again, and she wasn't scared. He looked at her. Oh, dear sweet Jesus in a polk. Sam was crying. Not angry-crying, she was -- Oh, God.

The worst part was that he wanted to cry, too, and he didn't know why.

"I -- I need you to go, please, Sam. Please just leave me alone, honey."

"I'm not going to do anything with it, Malcolm." Her hands balled into fists at her side.

He stopped moving, fixed in a spot in front of the carpet, feet cold on the flagstones before the fireplace he'd had bricked over a decade ago. He stared at her, cotton-mouthed. He never gave a toss when women cried, but Sam was a creature perfect and good and he should have made her redundant so long before any of this.

"Sam, in three days you are going to sit on the witness stand and be asked questions I _cannot let you_ answer."

"Malcolm, sit down," Sam said. "We're going to talk about this like adults and you aren't allowed to shout at me until we're done."

He started to recognize the heart attack-like feeling in his chest was fear. He sat.

*-*-*

In the morning, they ate pancakes and coffee in the living room, wrapped up in blankets. Her pale feet bore angry, strawberry marks, centered in white blister heads. Unable to ignore the sympathetic pain, Malcolm -- sitting on the other end of the couch with his coffee -- drew one foot to his thigh.

"Why didn't you return those shoes if you knew they did this to your feet?" He thumbed a circle around one spot, watching her skin turn colors as he soothed the red flesh.

She watched his long-fingered hand caress her. "It doesn't hurt now."

His hand felt sensual and glorious as the smell of coffee mingled with sweet fried pastry. He rubbed with thumb and forefinger over the knobs of her foot-knuckles, digging into the meat of her arch. She proffered her other foot for equal treatment.

They'd talked all night. She felt like she'd graduated from something. In a way, his reaction was a sort of grief. He knew she'd known that he'd lied about how he got Tickell's records, and she had thought that keeping his secret had been the price of admission to his flat. But that was unfair, wasn't it? Were they equals, or was she a child to be kept in the dark of his life?

"And I want to be equals," she said, sitting cross-legged opposite him on the sofa. She wasn't the least bit tired.

"Why?" Malcolm had gone monosyllabic with a bone-deep exhaustion, but he wasn't giving up.

Sam was an excellent interviewee. "I'm not a new employee anymore. I'm not your employee at all. I'm not so much younger than you, in the grand scheme of things."

Malcolm snorted.

"And I'm your friend. As I've demonstrated pretty fucking well, I should think, I can be trusted."

Malcolm's eyes drifted shut and opened again. Regretfully, he said, "Those are good reasons, love, but you forget that I don't trust anybody with anything."

Well. That was a bit of an impasse.

"What if I told you my secrets?" she said. "Things you couldn't tell anyone."

"You really shouldn't," he advised. "But I know all the good ones, we do background checks. And what the coppers didn't have on file about petty secondary school petty thievery --"

She huffed in indignation.

"-- and that semester you almost failed out because of the abortion -- which I'm sincerely sorry for, incidentally -- I've already figured out. Like your arsewipe of a father and his heavy hands."

"He didn't have 'heavy hands,' Glasgow, he hit us. But actually, he mostly just shouted."

He looked her over curiously. "Then why the hell do you want to be livin' with a violent psychopath like me?"

"You are not violent," she said. "You're a noisemaker, and sometimes a utilitarian bully. But you're not him. You're not cruel because you enjoy making other people smaller than you. I didn't always get you, and there's been times you scared me. But not anymore."

She didn't like the conflicted, regretful look on his face, or the pointless words that spilled from his mouth, but it had to be said. She didn't know where they were going with this, but the night seemed laden with potential.

His "I'm sorry" mattered.

They talked about the trial, about what she knew versus what she could speak to with certainty. She didn't have proof, either; she couldn't get him in trouble. He'd been careful. She only knew what he'd done because she knew _him_.

By then, he was stretched out with his head on a throw pillow against her thigh, his toes half propped on the end table. It looked terribly uncomfortable. She slung a blanket over the parts of him she could reach.

"I knew what you were doing and why," she said. "Tickell was collateral damage for the sake of the party. It wasn't about him, it's always about what he represents to the press."

"Do you think that's right?" His fingers toyed with the hem of her pj bottom.

She considered how to word the opinions she'd taken months, years even, to form. "It's not about right and wrong. Things just are. If we could build a perfect world where you issued everyone non biased fact sheets about all the issues, well, honestly, people wouldn't read them. Or they would and they'd vote for the candidate with the prettiest fact sheet. Politicians are actors, and it was our job to give them the best material. Or squash the worst material."

"So you've become a nihilist?"

"No, you're a nihilist. I just fetch the coffee."

"If you think I kept you around for that, love, then you need a good bop on the head."

She didn't realize how much she needed to hear his affirmation of her until he said it. She buried her fingertips in the curls above his ear and continued. "You believed in your party because you thought they could do good things for the country. So you did bad things to allow them to do their jobs. I just happen to know how bad those things were. Some of them." She shifted, and he snuggled up on her thigh more securely. "I'm not okay with everything you did, mind."

"You shouldn't be. No one should. But if you're telling me we should all shake hands and just get along --"

She tugged on a curl and he swatted her thigh. She rubbed his scalp, apologetically. "We should be doing small things to work for a better system. There should be ethics and we should make laws that force the ethics to be adhered to. But I know that that takes a lot of time, and work needs doing now."

When she looked down, he was looking up at her. His warm arm emerged from beneath the cushion and tugged playfully at one errant strand of hair, hanging down.

"Didn't realize you were such a fucking idealist."

She leaned back, hand going slack. "I'm not saying -- Christ, Malcolm, did you hear the part where I said I was okay with you stealing fucking medical records and leaking things to the press?"

"Did I say I mind that you're a fucking idealist? It's . . . precious." He was smirking.

She tried to shove him off her lap, but he wouldn't move. He leaned up, and she didn't lean away, even though she knew they'd reached the exit on the highway the whole evening had been speeding down.

He kissed her.

It was sleep-warm and hesitant, a light catch of lips. His hand caressed her neck, thumb stroking her ear as his fingers buried in her hair. Her breath caught, and she kissed back, catching his lower lip in hers and sucking gently. Her heart pounded and in the hazy pre-dawn, she wondered if this might be a dream. Did she want this?

Malcolm pulled away and sat up. She looked at him, feeling self conscious and remembering how little she was wearing under the blanket tossed over her shoulders. For heaven's sake, she'd been down here without a fucking bra all night -- but what was she to say: "excuse me while I go put on underwear, Malcolm"? She wasn't sure he noticed anyway.

But now he was looking at her with wild hunter's eyes, and she felt like the female protagonist in a fairy story.

"Was that stupid?" he said.

"I don't know," she said.

"I'm so fucking tired, love, you can blame it on adrenals if you prefer." He didn't mean it, or rather, he only said it to cover the base of having to say something to make her feel safe. Malcolm Tucker never made her feel completely safe, she realized now, because he represented a yawning maw of confusing sexual potential.

Because she was confused, and lonely, and because that kiss was like daybreak, she slid into his arms and held on tight. He held her and pity of Christ, he smelled good. She was glad she hosed off before she came downstairs for a snack a hundred chats ago.

"Do you want to go to bed?" Sam said. Malcolm sort of choked. "I mean -- sleeping? Except in the same bed? A nap."

He ducked in and kissed her again. "Darlin', if I wasn't a fuckin' zombie, I'd take you upstairs and make love to you good and proper. But if a cuddle is what you're asking . . . "

Upstairs, in his big, warm bed, Malcolm pulled her across his chest under his grey duvet and circled his arms around her waist. She crossed one bare leg across his, and leaned up for a good night kiss. One of many to come, she thought. Is this my life? Will this last?

She closed her eyes. Malcolm was warm and solid and probably not going to jail. They'd make breakfast in the morning and watch a film and move glacially slow on the kissing front and bicker and Christmas at her parents' was going to be really, really interesting. 


	3. Epilogue: The coolest girl

Malcolm woke hours later, rested, hungry, relaxed. Not for nothing was there a dark-haired, beautiful woman curled up around him. Oh, no. What the hell did they do. He unwrapped her arm from his waist and slunk to the cooler side.

Clever girl, he'd trained her as an assistant too well. She woke with him, blinking up at him in his big, white bed, nearly swallowed in the grey down duvet. She leveraged up on her elbow and kissed him. He sighed, done utterly in, feeling her softness down his whole body -- her thigh working between his, her stomach against his, the smoothness of her skin under his hands. Men were fun for energetic bedroom gymnastics, but women? He'd forgotten the way curves and gentleness could slot so nicely against his skinniness and feel so warm, so comforting.

They lay languidly kissing, exploring, and he was mildly amused that apparently they'd skipped the part of a relationship where you both got up and brushed your teeth in secret to pretend that you naturally smelled of aggressive mint. The other day, she broke wind and didn't say 'excuse me.' He should have known then that they were in it for good.

 He broke away, kissing down her throat, burying his face in her warmth and his hands beneath her t-shirt. Soft belly, swell of breast. Her hands caught his wrists in a crushing grip. He stopped, horrified. Was this the part where she told him she'd been drugged last night?

"Malc?" she said, looking vulnerable and unsure.

He pulled his hands off of her and put decent space between them. "It's all right, love, if this was just a pre-trial cuddle between friends --"

"What? No. Was it? Oh, god."

"What?" he said. She was making him nervous.

"Was it?" she said. "We never -- I thought you --"

"I do! You're beautiful, lass, I thought you knew -- I don't stay up all night spillin' my goddamn guts out for anyone, I'm not a goddamn fourteen year old Justin Beiber fan, for fuck's sake."

Sam giggled into his arm. He smoothed a wild hank of hair behind her ear. The front fringe bit was sticking straight up like she's stuck her fingers in a socket; she had eye crust and pillow lines. She was beautiful.

"I stopped you because we can't do anything for a few days," she said, raising her eyebrows at him. He frowned, not grasping it. Was she religious? "My period started last night, Malc. Christ, I thought you knew when I had it."

She slung her legs over the bed and left him watching her walk down the hall. He grinned at the view. T-shirt and knickers, she ought to go around the house wearing that all the time, except he'd never get any work done. He adjusted himself and got out of bed to follow her. Listening to the sound of her peeing and unwrapping cotton products from the boxes that had appeared in his bathroom about a week after she moved in, he leaned on the door and called inside.

"I don't actually care, love. That's why God gave men shower stalls."

"I'm not having sex in your shower!" she called back.

"The hell not? Ye demonstrated last night, ye've got the poise of a ballerina."

She let him come in and shave while she showered and told the story of her second day in his house, a day of tragedy and humiliation. How she broke her favorite jelly vibrator in his shower while attempting to use it standing in the narrow stall. There were bruises. She had to keep retelling bits, because she kept laughing, while he stood foam-faced with a growing erection, astonished that the electro-stimulated yet clumsy girl in this story was _his Sam._

She poked her head around the curtain, face covered in gritty goo. "I am. Yours."

He wiped the rest of the foam from his face and kissed her. She smelled like peaches. She pulled him into the steamy cubicle, shucking his towel and pyjama bottoms and pressing her wet, slick body to his and it was awkward and claustrophobic but she was there, had been there, in his life and mind and he couldn't imagine how he'd gotten on before this woman had filled up all the holes in his empty heart to overflowing.

Afterwards, when the water ran cold, she swatted him on the bum and ordered him downstairs, locking the bathroom door behind him.

He did as told. She was sort of perfect, he thought, as he started the coffee and found the pancake powder in the back of the pantry.


End file.
